


A Pack of Truth

by Siddall



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Awesome Molly Hooper, Gen, Post-Reichenbach, Slash if you squint, also het if you squint, brief flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-27 23:52:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siddall/pseuds/Siddall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly hadn't really thought about what she was offering to do for Sherlock. It's all getting a bit uncomfortable.</p><p>Set hours after the fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There were paparazzi outside the flat.

Molly paused as she turned the corner and saw them. Perhaps half a dozen men in all-weather clothing, ugly fat cameras slung about their bodies. Some were looking at phones, doubtless getting updates from the bigger horde hovering around Barts Hospital. One was handing out coffees in fragile styrofoam cups: Speedy's cafe had developed a takeout service after their neighbour became famous. Possibly there'd be a journalist inside, using the free wifi.

At Barts, the media were herded into a pen near the main entrance. There, photographers had stepladders to get a better angle, and journalists sat on the pavement with their iMacs booted up and dongles connecting them back to their newsrooms. There they were waiting for someone senior and official, for statements and soundbites. Perhaps even a carefully stage managed few moments with the bereaved. The hospital was working with them: all London hospitals had contingency plans for a big story. And the media played the game.

Here, here on the doorstep, were the freelancers. The agency snappers planning to get in faces, get a candid shot of someone and sell it to the highest bidder. They were after tears, rage, emotion. It had only been a couple of hours, but they looked settled in already. 

They probably weren't after her.

At Barts, she'd been able to walk past the pack. Just another staff member with a lanyard, tired as she came off shift. Here? Here they'd see her go in, they'd wonder how she was connected. Still, she had promised. Anything, she'd said, and meant it.

She walked quickly down the pavement, head down and shoulders hunched against the attention. She knew the moment she turned to that familiar door, they'd be on her. So the key was in her hand. She wormed through, turned, lifted the key.

_Miss? Miss, do you live here? Did you know him? Do you know he killed himself? Are you family? Are you friends? Did you know he was a fake? Why did he do it?_

She slammed the door on them, on the whirring of flash motors, the staccato clicking and the blunt questions.

It wasn't her they were waiting for anyway. Molly was just a passing amusement to them. They, like the pack at Barts, wanted John. They wanted to dissect him in public. _Grieving John Watson, the deceived doctor_. The offers for his story would be filling his inbox.

* * *

"You'll need to identify me, of course," Sherlock said, after outlining his plan.

"But John..."

"John will be hurried into a room and comforted. Whoever is looking after him will say he is too shocked to do it. Staff at Barts know you associate with me. I'm sure they know you've been to our flat so it's more than a passing professional acquaintance."

Yes, Molly thought, it's a lot more than that. She knew his profile, uplit by cold microscopes or tilted against the warm tones of his violin. She knew the way his hair fell over one eye, and curled into the nape of his neck. She knew that in the lab he looked liked a reptile, all cold pale skin and hard stares. And that at home he looked like a man, honeyed by firelight and softened by the love around him.

And she knew he would never think to call her a friend. Despite what she was about to do for him.

"What about...?" she ventured.

"Mrs Hudson? No-one likes to ask old ladies to do things like that. They mistakenly think the young are better at handling it. They'll get her along to sit with John. Lestrade? He's being torn strips off by his DCI, he'll be incommunicado. They will come to you. Afterwards, I want you to go to the flat and collect some things."

Sherlock held out a key ring with just one key on it. It was warm from his body heat.

* * *

She was very glad she'd brought a big bag with her to work today.

It was the kind of huge slouchy thing she could easily carry a pair of shoes, a lunchbox, a kindle, a packet of tissues and small make-up bag in and still have space for the copies of the Metro and Standard that she'd take home to recycle. The contents it had held were now all stuffed in her locker at work. 

Leaning against the front door, shutting the paparazzi out, Molly looked around. There were tools left in the main hallway and a bone china cup left half-filled by the telephone. Molly tried not to imagine Mrs Hudson's alarm when someone called her. _There's been an accident_ , they'd have said and she'd have needed to sit down for a moment.

She took the stairs quickly and quietly. Despite Sherlock asking her to do this, she felt like an intruder. Like when you were staying at a friend's and woke first. You wanted to make yourself a coffee but didn't know where the spoons were kept. The difference was she wasn't looking for a spoon.

_Put the key on the desk, in the clean ashtray. It's where I leave it normally._

Molly put the key down. Why did they even have an ashtray? John had quite firm views on smoking, especially on Sherlock smoking, so why would he have a big cut glass - no, crystal - ashtray on his desk?

Sherlock's room. Molly had tried to imagine it, back when her crush had involved fantasies of laughter and sex and sunny ever after. Back before she had actually come to know the man, and realised that loving him would be darker and too much for her to bear. Still, a bit of that girlish feeling made her heart skip and her breath catch as she entered the room.

It was...artful in its disarray. It looked like a staged photo of a room from a spread in one of the more ridiculous lifestyle magazines. Molly could imagine it titled "true bohemian living" and items listed with terrifying price tags. She crouched down in front of the traveller's trunk. Its drawers were all half out, but in a tasteful way. Sherlock liked the illusion of chaos.

_Take out the left bottom drawer. Behind it, you'll find a bag. I need it._

Molly withdrew a plastic ziplock bag. Inside she could see, wrapped in plastic, a dozen cheap mobile phones. She knew enough from working with the Met and Scotland Yard to recognise burner phones.

Had he planned this? Maybe not this particular circumstance, but a disappearance? Or did he just have a stash of burner phones for his occasional forays into the world of drugs? Did he have John's number on them?

Molly dumped the plastic bag into her own, and put the drawer back. she doubted she'd got it back just as it was before. Sherlock would have noticed someone had moved it, but then Sherlock wasn't coming back.

_Back of the wardrobe, inside the furthest suit in a dry-cleaning bag, inner jacket pocket._

Molly felt a bit uncomfortable moving his clothes about. It felt too intimate. A bit too stalkery, too. She'd once imagined stripping him of his suit, wrapping her arms around his silky waist. Although the clothes in the old wardrobe were clean, there was a hint of his cologne, a whisper of what it might have been like. 

Obviously, his suits were not on yellow plastic hangers and in cheap filmy wrappers like her dry-cleaning. She unzipped the fabric bag and slipped her hand into the jacket. Silk-lined of course. She'd seen John do this, but when the jacket was snug against Sherlock's chest. The silk would have been warm, not cold, and the cut would have been so tight John's hand must have brushed Sherlock's chest. 

Once, she would have envied John that.

She pulled out a slim wallet. Half a dozen credit cards, with dull names on them. Hans Strauss. Dr John Smith.

He _had_ planned for disappearances.

Molly added the wallet to her cache, zipped the suit bag back up, rearranged the clothes. 

_Flip over the print of Edgar Allen Poe and slit open the backing paper._

There was an envelope there, with perhaps five hundred in notes. Not crisp ones fresh out of a machine, either, and no fifties. No one trusted fifties any more. And a European passport. Into her bag they went and she only had one thing left to get. The problem was Sherlock hadn't been precise about it.

The front door slammed.

Molly froze.

There were heavy footsteps up the stairs, then silence again. 

Molly realised she'd heard muffled shouting and noise from the street. Sherlock's room faced the back courtyard and, like most Londoners, Molly had detuned the sounds of the city once indoors.

There was a yell and the smash of something hitting the wall.

John had come back.

This was not in the plan.


	2. Chapter 2

Molly had to move. She knew she couldn't be discovered here, not in Sherlock's room. Ideally not in the flat at all. She took a few terrified steps towards the stairs out. Of course, she found there was a squeaky board on the landing, uneven under the carpet. She shot a look towards the lounge and John caught her in his brittle glare.

"Molly?" he sounded disbelieving.

"I, er, erm, came to get you some things. They said, well, Claire said, that they'd be keeping you in overnight so I thought you'd want some things."

There. Her first lie to John. The first of how many? How hard to get it out, how easy for him to hear. Her natural diffidence disguising her nerves. He looked down then, staring at the carpet in the lounge. 

"He forgot his key. Again." he said.

Molly stepped forward into the room and saw shards of crystal scattered across the floor. All raw edges and glints of brilliance. The key she had used lay near the fireplace, surrounded by the worst of the ashtray's debris.

"Brain that sharp, and yet he'd lock himself out once a week. Stupid bastard."

Oh. Oh no, John wanted to talk. Why was he even here? "Let me get the dustpan and brush," Molly said. This was far sooner than she'd expected, and had been the hardest thing to agree to.

* * *

"When can I tell John?" Molly asked, after Sherlock had reeled off his list of requirements. Sherlock didn't look at her. His voice was flat when he spoke.

"Never. You tell him nothing of this."

"But, em, he'll...well...he's your best-"

"You tell him _nothing_ , Molly. It's vital that he, of everyone, _believes_ it."

Sherlock was looking at her now. He had her pinned with a look of such vehement steel that she nearly shut up. Nearly.

"Sherlock, it will, well, it might...he, well, I think he..."

"Molly, this is not the time for your well-meant but fumbling attempts to have a conversation about emotions. John will be fine. That's the whole point."

* * *

John was not fine. He stood, silent and blank, as Molly swept up the shards. She thought at first that she had never seen him like this before. John was the sociable one, the one who made comfortable small talk and good cups of tea. Who asked after her cat, and her mother, and brought in biscuits to replace the ones Sherlock had eaten. He was pints down the pub, blokey hugs and ready grins.

Then she flashed back to the first time she'd seen him. Not the first time they'd met properly, when he'd trailed into the lab at Sherlock's shoulder with a smile edging his eyes and a bounce in his step. No, a few days earlier. She'd just glanced at him then, as she looked around to see who Sherlock was embarrassing her in front of. He'd been leaning on a stick, every muscle tense and unhappy, his eyes wary and...haunted. 

He was like that tenfold now.

She really ought to go. Sherlock would be waiting by now. Yet it seemed so cruel to walk away from someone whose world had fallen in. Molly went up close, touched his arm. She wasn't even sure what she could say.

"John, I..."

He was clutching at her. Madly, violently. His arms pulled her in and his face buried itself into her shoulder. Molly could feel him shuddering, shaking with silent...rage? Grief? Heartbreak? 

They stumbled, like the whole world was missing its centre. John weighed so much in his collapse that Molly nearly fell too. When her calves hit the sofa, she pulled them backwards on to it. Her bag smashed into the armrest, contents clattering, and she left it fall from her shoulder. She got both arms around John, wrestled him about until he was against her right side instead of on top of her.

They both had their coats on, which struck her as ridiculous.

John's arms were still about her neck, his face still buried. He was silent, just gulping in air and sobbing it back out. Molly got her right arm up and under his left, so she could stroke the nape of his neck. Her other hand rested on his back, over his coat.

Some instinct made her start to rock him, like someone soothing a toddler who'd woken from a nightmare. Except he wasn't. The nightmare was real. And she could brush it away from him so easily. Just two little words, whispered in his ear.

_You tell him nothing, Molly. It's vital that he, of everyone, believes it._

She bit her lip, and made soothing noises. Held him so close, but nothing like as tight as he held her. Eventually, she felt his grip loosen and his arms slide down, under her coat and into a hug. He turned his head to rest on her shoulder instead of being buried in it. She rested her face on his crown, so she could smell London in his hair. All grit, and diesel and cheap dandruff shampoo. He was mumbling apologies, too low and ragged for her to hear.

Molly realised his right thumb was stroking the underside of her left breast at the same time he did.

"Oh god, Molly," John said, pulling back so his hand was at her waist instead. As if she were an anchor he daren't release. "I'm sorry."

"You've nothing to apologise for," she said. It's me, she thought, I should be apologising. She was lying to him with every second that passed. With every heartbeat he would believe the lie more and more. 

He looked at her, then leaned in and kissed her hard.

It wasn't passionate or gentle or any of the other kinds of kisses she was sure John gave his girlfriends. It was desperate and abrupt. His hands went into her hair, pulling and tugging at it. At first, Molly was too startled to react. In her head, the words were still drumming.

_He's alive. He's alive._

And this was one way, one not entirely unpleasant way, to drown the drums out. She tentatively put a hand back onto his neck to pull him closer. 

Instead he pulled away. Completely away this time, so he sat back from her and only their knees touched.

"Molly, oh god, Molly. I'm sorry. This...you're my friend...I..."

She looked at him. Maybe she should have looked at him ages ago, rather than being captivated by Sherlock. But it was far, far too late now.

"John, it's OK. You're still in shock. You should really be somewhere else. I'm just the nearest person."

He took a deep breath. Scrubbed his face with both hands as if he could wipe away the years that had hit him in the last few hours. Looked away from her towards the window. The one behind Sherlock's chair, where the violin case rested on the sill. The window that ought to have a lean silhouette in it.

"I just...I couldn't stay there. The "family liaison" wanted me to go to some hotel. Family! That's a joke. We were never... anyway I had to come back. I half expected him to be waiting, you know, impatient to tell me how he'd done it?"

"John..." _he's alive. He's alive. He's alive_.

"I felt for his pulse. I..."

John broke off. 

Molly had to get out of there. Sherlock was waiting for her and if she watched John crumple any more, she'd do something stupid. Kiss him back to stop herself blurting out the truth, probably.

"I should, er, erm..." she said, picking up her bag.

"Yes," he said sadly, "you should. Thank you, Molly."


	3. Chapter 3

There were perhaps a dozen photographers outside the flat now, clogging up the pavement. The moment Molly opened the doors, the flashes started, and the questions.

_Friend of the family, miss? How's John? Did he know? Were they lovers? Anything to say? Miss?_

She put on her professional calm look, the one Sherlock was so adept at breaking, and pushed her way through. She didn't look up, didn't shake her head or smile or even acknowledge they were there. Through the cordon and she strode away, as best she could in old converse. It was hard to be imposing when you were 5 foot nothing but she could at least be purposeful. At the junction with Marylebone Road she glanced back, briefly. The door to 221B was closed, the lights off upstairs. 

She should have told John to close the curtains, in case some enterprising neighbour offered the paps the view in from across the road for a fee. Too late now. Molly wasn't sure she'd ever see the place again.

* * *

Sherlock was writing something quickly on a sticky note. He'd peeled it off the stack before writing, so there'd be no impression left behind. When Molly looked, it wasn't his handwriting either. It was hers.

"Go here. Walk. Don't get a cab, don't use a bus. Check in under your own name and ask for a room at the back."

"I..."

"I'll reimburse you. Once in, leave the curtains open and flip the lights on for ten minutes. Then off for five, then on for ten."

Molly considered how foolish it would make her feel. She considered asking why he could replicate her handwriting and was that why her script pad had gone missing four years ago? She considered telling him that this was crazy, that she'd be risking her career, her reputation, her friendships. She looked at him and saw her father again.

"I'd best get started then," she said.

* * *

It had been one of those walks where the distance turned out to be longer than she expected. She'd reached Euston station and thought she was almost there, and then remembered there was that whole block full of Camden Council offices before she finally reached King's Cross. She didn't like the area: its notoriety in the 1980s for drugs and prostitutes lingered still. The pavements never looked properly clean. 

The RestEasy hotel chain had branches across the whole city. The one here was an Edwardian redbrick place, clearly once fine offices that had found themselves on the wrong side when the area slid downhill. Now they'd been converted into the kind of hotel where there were scuff marks on the paintwork and there were no hairdryers in the rooms.

The receptionist hadn't really looked up at Molly as she checked in. He was just processing people as fast as possible. He did glance up when she asked for a room at the back, but quickly assigned her one and handed over the swipe key.

Molly realised why the rooms weren't popular when she got inside. The back rooms had a view towards the City. They also overlooked a stretch of the underground that was open to the air, and a backstreet with a single bar. Tube trains rattled past every few minutes, filling the room with their clattering rumble despite the double-glazing. She looked at her watch. Just gone ten pm. A mere five hours since she walked out of Barts. There were at least two more hours of this racket till the network shut for the night. She really wished she'd left the paracetamol in her bag when she'd emptied it out.

After flicking the lights a few times, she sat on the bed to wait. She tried the TV but the main channels were moving into second rate films and the news channels... Well, the news channels were an unpleasant and uncomfortable mixture of lies. She lay over the covers and tried not to feel bored. She closed her eyes for five minutes, just to rest them.

When she opened them, there was a man standing at the foot of the bed, frowning at the soles of her shoes. At her start, he twitched. His eyes took an age to track up to hers. He looked haggard, his face sallow in the dim lights. He was dressed in grubby dark track suit bottoms, worn at the knees. His zipped up grey hoodie had a faint food stain, as if he'd wiped off split sauce. And his hair was cropped so short his scalp was showing. 

It was Sherlock. He looked...well, she looked like how she imagined he must have looked when Lestrade hauled him out of the gutter. He looked like someone who she'd avoided as she hurried through King's Cross, shaking her head at the request for any spare change.

"Are you alright, no, stupid question, obviously..." she started to say. He gave her The Look. The one that made her feel like a blithering idiot rather than someone with not one but two doctorates and an exceeded mark on every performance review. The look that shone the brilliance of Sherlock's mind through the cracks of his disguise. She'd opened with a question about feelings. Really, after all this time, she should have known better.

"Why here? Why not at my flat?"

"I need to be here first thing. Your flat is both too far, and too monitored."

"Monitored? What? Do you mean Jim...is...was Moriarty watching me?"

Sherlock shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. He may have left a camera there during your...liaison."

"What? But that was ages ago and besides we never, erm, well, he never..."

"Stayed the night? No, I know. As does Mrs Dalston downstairs who has insomnia, an insatiable nose for gossip and a habit of talking to anyone who says hello. Especially any man under 40 within a 25 metre radius of your door."

He paused, looked away for a moment.

"Never under-estimate little old ladies, Molly."

There was another pause. He walked over to the table in front of the window, swept her bag up and retreated to the shadows again. He rifled through it, rattling about the contents and clearly checking off his list. Molly saw a flicker, an all too familiar glint of disappointment. 

"Wait, how did you get in the room?"

He twisted towards the door, then back to face her. It looked wrong, and it took Molly a moment to realise why. There was no dramatic swish of a coat. Instead he looked like someone checking they weren't being watched.

"Housekeeper swipe. Palmed it a year ago when I was dealing with a rather basic diamond smuggling case."

There was a long pause. Sherlock never paused. Molly was suddenly conscious she was lying on a bed, late at night with Sherlock's gaze on her. He was scanning her, eyes flicking from foot to crown. It was...unnerving. It was thrilling. It was something she'd thought about far too much to ever expect. She'd told herself that that Sherlock was not nice. He was bad news, bad boyfriend material. And Molly wasn't capable of sex without affection.

His eyes dropped.

"John was there," he stated.

"Yes."

He looked up, blazingly furious. "Why? Why would he be there? It's not logical, it's not rational, it's..."

"He...well, erm, he thought you ...hoped you would be there to explain it all. He's hoping it's just a trick. He, well..."

Sherlock's eyes returned to her shoes. "He broke the ashtray. There's a sliver of it caught in your shoe tread." 

He said it flatly, without his usual quicksilver delivery. As if he took no delight in the discovery. As if, well, as if it was painful to him. It was just an ashtray. His usual theatrical flourishes were floundering. Molly sat up and pushed herself to the edge of the bed, caught hold of his hand as it wavered around.

He crumpled to his knees and buried his head into her shoulder. She put her hand into the nape of his shorn head, feeling the fuzz where she'd always imagined curls. He didn't shake, or make a noise. Instead she could feel him breathing in and out slowly, deeply. 

"I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't get anything of John's. He came back, you see, and..."

Sherlock turned his head, leaning his cheek against her shoulder and breathing out the words into her neck. "You've brought enough."

   
 

Around dawn, he leant in to her and kissed her neck. It sent a shard of desire straight through her.

All she had to do was turn and-

And he was sliding off the bed, shedding his street disguise as he walked to the tiny ensuite. It wasn't a sexy promise, it was like he wasn't even aware she was there. The shower started up, as did the rumble of tube trains through the cutting. It must be around five-thirty then.

"Bollocks," Molly whispered, then got up to make some bitter instant coffee.

Sherlock emerged fifteen minutes later, as the light outside was shifting from the sodium yellow of the night to the pink of the day. He was in a tweed jacket, a short sandy wig, an almost Edwardian beard and heavy black-framed glasses. His tight indigo jeans were turned up to allow for dark workbooks, and he had a canvas satchel diagonally across his chest. He looked like a Shoreditch young fogey or someone from the media hothouses of Soho. He looked like he was called Dr John Smith. 

He tipped her bag over, the contents spilling across the bed. His long fingers shifted through the piles. one passport into his jacket, the rest into the satchel. The same with the phones. Some of the money into a canvas wallet, the rest into a slit in the lining of the jacket. 

"Sherlock..." Molly said. He frowned at her.

"John," he answered, with a faint affectation of estuary in his voice.

"Yes, John will...well, I'm not sure how I won't be able to to tell him that, well, that you're..."

"I'm John now, Molly. If you see me again. And he must not know, mustn't even suspect."

There was a long silence, as he avoided her eyes in favour of staring at her shoulder. Finally, he spoke in his own voice, and she realised she might be the last person to hear it for a long time. Perhaps forever.

"Thank you, Molly."

After he left, she took a shower to freshen up. She'd barely slept, and she didn't have a change of clothes. She had to be at Barts in a couple of hours. Maybe she could nip into St Pancras to get a clean top. There had to be a Monsoon there or some other clothes place. It was the Eurostar terminus after all, and there were always international travellers who...oh. Finally, she realised why he'd needed to be here. By now he'd be underground, halfway to the Continent. 

It was as Molly was getting dressed she noticed it. Her top, her coat too, smelt of aftershave and cologne. Cheap aftershave and expensive cologne, so different from one another. There were short, pale hairs on her shoulder, right where Sherlock had rested his dark, shorn head. Right where he had inhaled so slowly and deeply. She had brought something of John for him, after all. 

Molly sat on the bed, and started to cry.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from **The Secret Life of Bees** by Sue Monk Kidd:  
>  “Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.”
> 
> Beta-read for story sense by [Kalima](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kalima). All typos my own.


End file.
